What old tanks though? We have not been using the Leo 1 for decades now. There aren't any in active service, all that were left in Germany have already been given to Ukraine or are made ready to be given to Ukraine.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This really baffles me. What does Germany want with a bunch of obsolete Leopard 1s anyway? I guess they could break them down for parts and then send parts they already had to Ukraine, allowing Ukraine to repair some of their damaged Leopard 1s.

[–] RidderSport@feddit.org 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I doubt that would be allowed with the sales agreement. Allthemore baffling, Switzerland really fucked themselves over there

[–] snuggledick@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

A lot of speculation in the comments here but there's some context/details missing.

"Germany" didn't buy the tanks but the German company Rheinmetall
While the price isn't known, another company previously bought 25 of those tanks from RUAG for lousy 500€ a piece and then didn't even bother to come pick them up, so I assume Rheinmetall got a similar deal
Lots of countries still use them, Greece even wants to enlarge and upgrade their fleet of Leopard 1, they're still in demand and with a purchase price of 500€ and a bit of repairs there's probably a ton of money to be made

So my guess is this has nothing to do with Ukraine, just a company seeing a business opportunity.